A Passion for Asia

Living in a multi-ethnic community with a strong Asian Community, specifically a large community of Vietnamese, my nose is always smelling the strong, spicy, fresh, verdant smells of the Vietnamese/Asian food endemic to the riegion of Vietnam, part of Asia, who are strongly represented in the community where I live.

These strong, spicy smells, replete with the fresh smell of lime and coriander, reinforced by the sights and sounds of the community - Asian shops, and the music from the shops, are always making my taste buds burst with the flavour explosion of the Aisan foods and bringing me nostalgic reminders of the country of my birth.

Unfortunately I left Asia early in life and so cannot claim to be a master of Asian cookery. But I have done some experimenting and I've made a few tasty approximations of Asian style food in my time. My more dedicated followers will remember the spicy noodle soup with the natto, (an ancient asian fermented soybean superfood beloved by the samurai) and the Asian inspired potato omelette served with Asian stir fried broccoli greens that were featured on a previous blog post. Well, here's my latest foray into the cooking of the country of my birth. Inspired by the verdant freshness of the flavours of Vietnam, and the community I live in, I hope you enjoy this bowel of cold noodle salad with vegetables and tofu/seitan.



Cold noodle salad with coriander, cucumber, sriracha mayonnaise, marinated salad vegetables, roasted cashew nuts, lime, and seitan.

Well I really enjoyed this dish. It was spicy, fresh, sweet and sour, with fresh raw marinated vegetables adding crunch to compliment the rich flavour of the seitan. Here it's served in an appropriately bamboo patterned bowl, and if you look just to the top right of the photo, you'll appreciate a disarmingly candid little peek into my room. As I write, if I adjust my gaze just a little to the left, I see much the same view as you do, except the lamp, to save greenhouse gases from the environment, is off and so the yellow glow that you see is not present.

May I present: the dish! :-)

The seitan was Marinated then stir fried with a mixture of Chinese style black fermented soybean paste (a bit like Miso, but runnier, and the beans are more intact than in miso, which is smooth, and with a special Chinese flavour all of its own), soy sauce, mirin, and srirachi. This caramelised beautifully. If you like, you could use a firm tofu instead of seitan.

The noodles are a bean vermicelli, (which is an Italian word meaning "angels hair") that were cooked and then cooled under cold water.

Wedge of fresh lime.

Behind the lavish coriander garnish, you can just see the fresh cucumber.

Next you see the srirachi mayonnaise, a mixture of srirachi, mayonnaise, and soy sauce. The French influence on the cuisine of Vietnam accounts for the use of Mayonnaise, and also the use of crusty bread rolls in the Vietnamese favourite, banh me.

A smaller garnish of coriander gives way to the marinated fresh chopped vegetables. Carrot, green capsicum and daikon (white radish) were finely chopped and marinated in rice vinegar, sugar and water, which i had heated and cooled to make sure the sugar was well dissolved. The fresh vegetables need only to be marinated half an hour, but you can keep them for longer of course.

Finally, I tossed some cashew nuts, which had been gently roasted in a dry pan, into the dish to top it.

Bon' Apetete!

Close Up

This was a delicious dish. I was really proud of the way the flavours worked together in my mouth to cause a sort of explosion of different flavours, hot, spicy, sour, sweet. The different textures as well were varied and exotic, tender but chewable seitan, crisp marinated vegetables, slimy mayonnaise, leafy coriander, crisp and wet cucumber, and woody but buttery nuts, to say nothing of the tender but chewable vermicellie (an Italian word meaning Angels Hair) noodles. I can only imagine what my ex girlfriend might have said about this dish. I'm sure she would have hoped that it would have ended up on a food blog. She was always appreciative and such a support to me in my cooking travels. That's what cooking is to me, a sort of travel. You can travel to all different lands, and experience so many different tastes right in your kitchen. Anyway. I digress. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Here's a quick little vid of me eating this delicious dish.

Turn up, the sound! :-)

Bonus blog post

Every now and then you get something unexpected for free.

Here are a few images of me that each capture a little something about the way my life is right now.

Image Number One: head in my hand, gazing out the window.

I'm sitting with my head in my hand, gazing out the window. What am I thinking about? I don't know. Could be a rumination on life, or could be the half formed beginning of a new recipe.

Image number Two: the beginnings of determination, but my head still in my hand.

My head is still in my hand, but the posture shows the beginnings of determination. Whatever is on my mind is starting to take shape, but what is it? If a recipe, is it kebabs? A new salad? Perhaps I am ruminating on weightier matters, like life, or perhaps my open letter to Miley Cyris is at last beginning to take shape.


Image number Three. A New Friend, a Plant.

This plant and I are quickly becoming great friends.

Inspirations

I was just hanging out in my room today and thought hey, maybe I should throw a little something up on the food blog to enlighten my readers on a little topic I like to call "my roots"

Because as my mother used to say, if you wanna know something, you've got to know the "roots"

See

This shit isn't easy, dig it?

You don't just "start" a food blog like this out of no were.

Let's have a look at what came before the blog. My inspiration. My "apprentise-ship". The food I cooked before I could write about food. Where the ideas "came" from.

Because everybodie has to come from some were


Root Number One. "Numero Uno" he he

Asian inspired Potato Omelette with side of Asian inspired Broccoli Strips, garnished.

So this was a time when I was just hanging out at my old place, and felt like something tasty for lunch. I crispy fried some potatoes and folded them into an omelette. The omelette was inspired by my country of birth, Asia, because it I sautéed some spring onion whites into the potatoes and beat the eggs with soy sauce and mirin.

As for that broccoli, that was stir fried in a medium hot wok, caramelised in soy, mirin and ginger, and tossed on to the plate before being under tossed with roughly chopped tossed spring onion. It's just perfectly crisp tender and just deliciously sweet/salt and saucey.

The entire ensemble was served on a white plate on a rustic wooden slab.

I nailed it.

This dish is the single biggest inspiration for my food blog. It's a perannial favourite of mine that I improv variations on all the time. When my ex-girlfriend tried it she was so impressed. She told me I should write a food blog. The seed was planted.


Root Number 2

Mushroom Fettucinnie with Artichoke Cream, Side Salad of Tomato and Basil

I hate using cream on pasta. But I'd been hankering all day for a rich mushroom sauce, and needed something to coate the fettucinne I was planning on serving it on. I was inspired to use a "cream" made of blended artichoke hearts. I made the mushroom sauce as usual by sautéing mushrooms, garlic, stock, white wine, etc, and then tossed the artichoke cream through the hot pasta before tossing the mushroom sauce through the hot pasta.

I served it up on a cream coloured plate with brown concentric rings around it, with a Traditional Italian side salad of Tomato and Basil. Simple and Classic.

When my ex-girlfriend tried it she was so impressed. She said I really should make that food blog that I'd been talking about.

If you're planning on making a similar sauce using my artichoke "cream", I'll give you a tip. Word to the wise. Make sure you buy artichoke hearts in plain oil, not vinegar. That pesky vinegar flavour can be very hard to work with if you don't necessarily want it there.


Root Number Three

Asian inspired Spicy Noodle Soup with Home-Made Kimchi and Natto

This hot, salty, sour soup was just so hot and tasty that I'm getting the taste back in my saliva right now just looking at it. Asian inspired, drawing on the country of my birth, it's basically a miso and noodle soup flavoured with the hot spicy pickle juice from my own home made Kimchi. You can see chunks of delicious salt-sour kimchi in there, and on top, under the tossed garnish, you'll see my delicious home made slimy Natto generously lathered on top.


You're probably familiar with Kimchi (pronounced "Kimchie"), a hot, salty, sour, pickled, fermented cabbage from Asia famous for its health benefits. But fewer of you might be familiar with Natto. A word to the wise, if you haven't heard of Natto yet (pronounced "Nut o") it's well worth checking out. It's an ancient Asian fermented superfood in the form of slimy fermented soybeans. It's available in most Asian shops, but unfortunately most commercially available varieties are packed full of additives that you might want to avoid. I make my own using spores that I get online. Here's a picture of a tray of freshly made, home made pure Natto, ancient Asian superfood.

I digressed. Back to the noodles! I served those noodles up in a deep china bowel, and when my ex-girlfriend tried this she was so impressed by the hot, sour, salty, sliminess that she said we should definitely take a picture for the future food blog. So we took a picture right then. I'm really fond of this pic because if you look closely you can get a little glimpse into my life at the time. There's my desk, given to me by my ex-neighbours who were also my friends. There's my old keyboard, that I used to use to type. There's my leg, in my trademark black jeans, and my foot wearing an old scuffed up la-coste sneaker that I got from an opportunity shop for only $18 dollars Australian. A great shoe that I still have. Floorboards. USB cable.

Ahh. This photo doesn't only just bring back the hot, sour, salty memorie of those noodles to my mind.




Root Numero 4!

Fried Potatoes

Classic Fried Potatoes, served in a blue and white Greek inspired bowel on a backdrop of black granite.

Whether I fold them into an omelette, dust them with a combination or any one or all of paprika, cumin, chilli, tumeric, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper, or another spice, or squeeze lime juice on them, or a combination of lime and spice, coriander, tomato salsa, or simply eat them out of the pan after a long night on the tiles, the Fried Potatoe has always been a culinary friend of mine. Here they are cooked simply in sunflower oil, sprinkled with salt, and served in a blue and white Greek inspired bowel on a backdrop of black granite.

When my ex-girlfriend tried these she was so impressed by the classic simplicity - just potatoe, oil, and salt, that she demanded we take this shot. After all, she said, when I was eventually enspired to write the food blog, I would need some material. And what better than this classic. Just potatoe, oil, and salt.

I'm not sure what I'm doing here. It looks to me like I'm just hanging out in a bar, enjoying life. My ex-girlfriend probably took this shot. Looking at this photo, I think I was feeling peaceful and kind, looking over my camera lense at my ex-girlfriend as we shared a happy and peaceful moment just hanging out, together enjoying life, in a bar.

Kebabs

Currently just amusing myself musing over some ideas for kebabs.


How about:

Tofu, broccoli and shitake mushroom, marinated overnight in soy sauce, garlic, ginger and mirin, possibly some palm sugar for extra caramelisation


Haloumi chunks, capsicum, red onion slices, mushrooms, basted with olive oil, garlic, oregano and sumac, served with lemon wedges

Sweet potato, fresh sage leaves and fetta



This is how I look right now.

An apology (heartfelt)

Dear Readers

I would like to offer a heartfelt apology for the lack of updates to the blog lately. The last few weeks have been an incredibly tough and challenging time for me and my family. An event happened, which for the privacy of my family I shall not go into here, and I was forced to make the incredibly challenging and tough decision to forsake the blog in order to provide support to myself and my family. The decision was hard to make but I realised that my family must come first.

I'm sure you'll be glad to know that the event has been dealt with and my family are all okay. Now it's time for me to deal with the personal tolle of the event. I'm just starting to pick up the emotional pieces. Some inspiration is coming back. I've bought a new plant, I've got some ideas for kebabs, I've got a backlog of inspirational food images to share, and some great shots of myself just hanging out. Dedicated followers will be glad to know I've finally started on my open letter to Miley Cyrus. I'm hopeful that the start of the New Year will be a gentle and love filled time for me, and I'm sure that this blog and my dear followers will be a be a big part of that gentle love.

Love

looking forward towards peace.

new shorts. thanks salvoes!

stay cool everyone